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Wubbles posted:So, why was Luke just handed a fighter ship and made a commander like a minute after he met with the Rebels? Pretty sure he wasn't a commander vs. the 1st Death Star; he took orders from Red Leader like the rest of them (though I'm not sure why he was able to order Biggs & Wedge around). Afterwards, well, you got a PR godsend like the guy who killed the Death Star, you play it to the hilt, so I can see him making commander ASAP to look good to the people the Rebellion was trying to sway (well, that and it was if memory serves a while between ANH and ESB, depending on how high Rebel casualties were he might have been an "old man of the squadron" by surviving that long). api call girl posted:Reminder that pretty much none of the Rebel deaths at the Battle of Yavin were from any of the lasers on the Death Star but from Darth Vader and his couple regular TIE-flying wingmen. Amusingly enough, I'm pretty sure we saw "inferior" TIEs killing more X-Wings and Y-Wings than being killed off, at best the Rebels managed slightly worse than even kill rate even if you assume they killed all the other TIEs off-screen. Guess Vader really did have elite pilots out there.
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Mar 15, 2013 08:26
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How much time passes between the end of ANH and the start of Empire? (with a minimum of reference to EU sources)On the one hand the rebels have built a pretty big base there, on the other hand they are still reconfiguring all their equipment and setting up their perimeter at the start of the film.
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Mar 15, 2013 12:48
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Alchenar posted:How much time passes between the end of ANH and the start of Empire? (with a minimum of reference to EU sources)On the one hand the rebels have built a pretty big base there, on the other hand they are still reconfiguring all their equipment and setting up their perimeter at the start of the film. 3 years pass between ANH and ESB, 1 year between ESB and ROTJ.
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Mar 15, 2013 13:37
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MadDogMike posted:Pretty sure he wasn't a commander vs. the 1st Death Star; he took orders from Red Leader like the rest of them (though I'm not sure why he was able to order Biggs & Wedge around). Afterwards, well, you got a PR godsend like the guy who killed the Death Star, you play it to the hilt, so I can see him making commander ASAP to look good to the people the Rebellion was trying to sway (well, that and it was if memory serves a while between ANH and ESB, depending on how high Rebel casualties were he might have been an "old man of the squadron" by surviving that long). Making the rebel ships look all beat-up and the TIEs all sleek was supposed to convey that the former are the underdogs, but somehow the EU got hooked on this idea that the X-Wing was actually a cutting edge superiority fighter and that the Empire had to race to make something comparable (hence the bent-wing fighters in Return of the Jedi.)
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Mar 15, 2013 14:33
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I always preferred the explanation from the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. The rebel crafts were all general purpose vehicles they had to use for multiple functions, not all of which they were build for (my favourite must be their method of attacking destroyers and such by crashing an A-Wing into the bridge). The Empire on the other hand can afford to make a variety of different vehicles each with a specific purpose.
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Mar 15, 2013 16:06
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The MSJ posted:I always preferred the explanation from the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. The rebel crafts were all general purpose vehicles they had to use for multiple functions, not all of which they were build for (my favourite must be their method of attacking destroyers and such by crashing an A-Wing into the bridge). The Empire on the other hand can afford to make a variety of different vehicles each with a specific purpose. But this becomes a problem when the all-purpose vehicle outperforms all the specialized vehicles in their respective fields.
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Mar 15, 2013 16:14
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Maxwell Lord posted:Making the rebel ships look all beat-up and the TIEs all sleek was supposed to convey that the former are the underdogs, but somehow the EU got hooked on this idea that the X-Wing was actually a cutting edge superiority fighter and that the Empire had to race to make something comparable (hence the bent-wing fighters in Return of the Jedi.) I've always liked the TIE Interceptor design, which is the bent wing TIE you are referring to. It kind of makes sense since they introduced the TIE Bomber in the Empire Strikes Back, and if we want to believe the EU there were already TIE Interceptors during the first movie, just not that many of them. Speaking of EU and X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, why aren't they up on Steam? That is an absolute travesty. Hell, I can't believe that they haven't made another sequel. Oh and I dug out my collection of X-wing novels from 15 years ago. They aren't as good as I remember.  Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they get better once Aaron Allston takes over and switches to Wraith Squadron? Michael Stackpole likes to throw in as much word salad as possible; it's like Star Trek levels of technobabble in his books.
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Mar 15, 2013 16:50
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The TIE Interceptor is a very pretty bit of design, but I find all the rationalising about manufacturers and speeds and functions etc a bit tedious as the X-wing and original TIE are pretty symbolic designs; the specifics don't matter. You get absolutely everything you need to know about them by looking at/hearing them. The way that the X-wings all have a different engine pitch noise as well as different astromech droids is great because you get a lot of character from seeing the same set back-to-back with the various battle edits. The paintjobs and dirty, repaired armour is really good shorthand and tells you more than a million page wookiepedia article with tedious specifics will. Compare/contrast the customised X-wing pilot helmets to the identikit TIE pilot ones, and that's it - job done. It always makes me wonder 'why' the EU and all these technical readouts exist; what you see on screen should be enough. I dunno. ROTJ is slightly confusing what with the B-wings and A-wings etc which runs against the idea that it's a ragtag fleet. I think with most things SW, it's more interesting when it's smaller.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:12
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echoplex posted:ROTJ is slightly confusing what with the B-wings and A-wings etc which runs against the idea that it's a ragtag fleet. I think with most things SW, it's more interesting when it's smaller. In ROTJ it works because the Rebel Fleet itself looks a mixed bag of ships compared to the massed Star Destroyers of the Empire. Overall the three films give the impression of a rebellion that's gradually increasing in organisation and resources in the background as we focus on the heroes. In ANH it's just a bunch of guerilla fighters in a backwater base who've pulled off just enough high-profile attacks that Luke on a backwater-planet has heard of them. By the time of ROTJ they're operating a fleet and it's no longer all-humans and they have spy networks and they're clearly still the underdogs but they're more of an army and actually contemplating a full scale military operation against the Empire.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:24
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echoplex posted:ROTJ is slightly confusing what with the B-wings and A-wings etc which runs against the idea that it's a ragtag fleet. I think with most things SW, it's more interesting when it's smaller. As the posted above is saying, I'm really surprised you're saying this. The "entirety" of the Rebel Fleet is a bunch of put together mixes of different nonsense and designs, with a bunch of different races, while the Empire is uniform (in race as well). it provides a rather perfect contrast there.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:38
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The MSJ posted:(my favourite must be their method of attacking destroyers and such by crashing an A-Wing into the bridge). That was pretty obviously an accident.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:51
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Mooktastical posted:That was pretty obviously an accident. Not once the EU got ahold of it! 
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Mar 15, 2013 18:11
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mr. stefan posted:Not once the EU got ahold of it! Wait, really?
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Mar 15, 2013 18:12
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penismightier posted:Wait, really? Yeah, the prow of the A-wing is actually a battering ram. Dude totally spun out of control on purpose in ROTJ. I just read this the other day myself.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:20
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reagan posted:Yeah, the prow of the A-wing is actually a battering ram. Dude totally spun out of control on purpose in ROTJ. The way the extended universe destroys everything good about the films in order to perpetuate them is like something out of Borges.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:31
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God drat, EU.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:32
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My "favorite" part about the EU is how every character shown in the films, even if it's for just a few seconds, is made out to be a significant character. I don't remember the details, but there's one stormtrooper who fell backwards when the other stormtroopers around him fell forwards. It turns out that the one that fell backwards is actually a super important guy (I want to say he was involved in finding the Death Star plans because in the EU those plans have passed through basically every character seen in the movies, named or not).
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Mar 15, 2013 18:47
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reagan posted:Dude totally spun out of control on purpose in ROTJ. That is loving stupid. How does someone spin out on purpose? The guy even screams before he bites it. I really hate poo poo like that.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:48
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My go-to example of EU banality: the one gunner on the death star who says "stand by" twice at Yavin ended up being a major character of some novel, who was actually a nice guy who felt guilty about blowing up alderaan and deliberately stalled so Luke could blow him up.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:51
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mr. stefan posted:My go-to example of EU banality: the one gunner on the death star who says "stand by" twice at Yavin ended up being a major character of some novel, who was actually a nice guy who felt guilty about blowing up alderaan and deliberately stalled so Luke could blow him up. Nah, the best is the original R5 droid Luke picks out that breaks down, allowing C-3PO to suggest R2 as a replacement. Turns out that droid was in tune with the Force and saw a premonition of what would happen if R2 and Luke did not meet, and so willingly sacrificed itself in order to allow the galaxy to be saved.
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Mar 15, 2013 19:11
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Srice posted:My "favorite" part about the EU is how every character shown in the films, even if it's for just a few seconds, is made out to be a significant character. It is really loving sad that I know this, but are you talking about Davin Felth? The "look sir, droids!" sandtrooper? I'm going to go shoot myself in the head for having that lodged in the back of my brain.
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Mar 15, 2013 19:20
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Alchenar posted:In ROTJ it works because the Rebel Fleet itself looks a mixed bag of ships compared to the massed Star Destroyers of the Empire. Overall the three films give the impression of a rebellion that's gradually increasing in organisation and resources in the background as we focus on the heroes. In ANH it's just a bunch of guerilla fighters in a backwater base who've pulled off just enough high-profile attacks that Luke on a backwater-planet has heard of them. By the time of ROTJ they're operating a fleet and it's no longer all-humans and they have spy networks and they're clearly still the underdogs but they're more of an army and actually contemplating a full scale military operation against the Empire. Darko posted:As the posted above is saying, I'm really surprised you're saying this. The "entirety" of the Rebel Fleet is a bunch of put together mixes of different nonsense and designs, with a bunch of different races, while the Empire is uniform (in race as well). it provides a rather perfect contrast there. I think it's the implementation. I love the look of the Rebel fleet in terms of the people and the capital ships; but stuff like the B-wing with it's own tiny S foils feels like a lot of Star Wars does post ESB - the same, but MORE. With ANH it always felt that the X and Y wings were relics; uncrated antiques held together, in the Y-wing's case missing all it's armour. The appearance of more ships in the ~wing format just strikes me as odd; I would just expect more X wings really. What with ROTJ having the EVEN BIGGER Death Star and ESB having the EVEN BIGGER Star Destroyer, like I say, it just feels a bit too busy. A bunch of battered X-wings is... enough, I guess? I totally get what you're both saying, and I agree in principle, it would just be interesting to have seen something that wasn't trying to be the replacement toy. The first look was perfect. I do love that Rebel fleet hangar matte painting, though. A lot.
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Mar 15, 2013 19:35
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The second, bigger Death Star is the ultimate expression of that extended universe poo poo - when you look at the "stats" oh no it's superhuge and balls powerful, but on screen - it's in loving space, you can't tell how big it is! Come on!
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Mar 15, 2013 19:37
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penismightier posted:The second, bigger Death Star is the ultimate expression of that extended universe poo poo - when you look at the "stats" oh no it's superhuge and balls powerful, but on screen - it's in loving space, you can't tell how big it is! Come on! Another area where the simplicity and effectiveness of the original shines through. They establish the scale by having the characters think it's a moon when they first see it. RoTJ they put it around an actual moon that is much bigger so the Death Star actually feels smaller.
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Mar 15, 2013 19:47
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I love that the rebels in RotJ go to war with the space ship equivalent of a U-haul as the majority of their fleet.
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Mar 15, 2013 22:22
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Mooktastical posted:That is loving stupid. How does someone spin out on purpose?
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Mar 15, 2013 22:39
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Grendels Dad posted:But this becomes a problem when the all-purpose vehicle outperforms all the specialized vehicles in their respective fields. The Rebel fighters were significantly more advanced models, the Empire had a somewhat unexhaustable supply of pilots (especially for the number of threats they actually faced) and just threw them in cheap and easily replaceable ships since up until the destruction of the first Death Star there was no significant force that would even require anything better. Note how Darth Vader didn't go out in one of those deathtraps, he had his very own TIE advanced with shields and a hyperdrive and all the fancy bits that an X-Wing had. The Rebels on the other hand were able to secure a ton of backroom funding but had no significant personnel force so having a ship with a bit more survivability in a dogfight was worth the expense. I did always find it a bit odd when they showed up later with the big capitols and stuff though. I mean, if the Empire sees you using like 10 Mon Calimari ships they would probably just go blow the gently caress out of the shipyards at Mon Calimari, ditto with the B-Wing since that thing was like a dedicated advanced bomber that wouldn't be sitting around in a planetary militia like an X-Wing or A-Wing might be. But whatever, it makes for a fun climax an an awesome series of Sim games.
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Mar 16, 2013 01:38
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If I remember, the Mon Cal ships were reconverted luxury starships. I think the B-wing was a prototype that Ackbar developed himself, and I think it was complicated as gently caress to operate so there were only a handful to operate. 
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Mar 16, 2013 03:09
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reagan posted:Speaking of EU and X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, why aren't they up on Steam? That is an absolute travesty. Hell, I can't believe that they haven't made another sequel.  They're great games. I don't know why the rights-holders are squatting on them, they play great with a 360 controller.
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Mar 16, 2013 03:18
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E: fucksake, wrong thread crosspost. TO STAY ON TOPIC: The old X-wing/Tie fighter games are DOS-era, aren't they? whoever is holding the rights may just not give enough of a poo poo to port them/package an emulator in with the games. Also, I think Lucasarts is traditionally terrible about that sort of thing these days. Babysitter Super Sleuth fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Mar 16, 2013 |
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Mar 16, 2013 03:34
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Spaceman Future! posted:The Rebel fighters were significantly more advanced models, the Empire had a somewhat unexhaustable supply of pilots (especially for the number of threats they actually faced) and just threw them in cheap and easily replaceable ships since up until the destruction of the first Death Star there was no significant force that would even require anything better. Note how Darth Vader didn't go out in one of those deathtraps, he had his very own TIE advanced with shields and a hyperdrive and all the fancy bits that an X-Wing had. The Rebels on the other hand were able to secure a ton of backroom funding but had no significant personnel force so having a ship with a bit more survivability in a dogfight was worth the expense. See, this is a terrible explanation. It not only makes no sense--it takes away from the Alliance's underdog status. And it's become the official story.
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Mar 16, 2013 07:20
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Madurai posted:See, this is a terrible explanation. It not only makes no sense--it takes away from the Alliance's underdog status. And it's become the official story. They were still the underdogs. The Imperial dogfighters are poo poo because they didn't need anything else, if a planet was out of order they had supermassive gently caress off Star Destroyers just pummel the poo poo out of it, the fighters existed to pick off smuggler ships and whatnot. The Rebel fighters were, at most, competent planetary militia starships, "More advanced" kind of loses meaning at that point. Whatever slight edge they may have had in military hardware for their fighters is crushed by being completely outnumbered and outgunned. They didn't even have that many of them, hell you see their entire fleet of fighters at the end of ANH when they send everything they got up against the Death Star and there's like 20 of them, the Imperials have hundreds of Star Destroyers and hundreds of thousands of TIE fighters. On top of that the Rebel capitol fleet consists of "corvettes" that are so tiny and useless that a Star Destroyer can fit one in its docking bay, Nebulon Frigates which may as well be made of tin foil, and apparently luxury cruisers that had guns strapped onto them. Not an intimidating force by any means.
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Mar 16, 2013 07:59
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penismightier posted:The second, bigger Death Star is the ultimate expression of that extended universe poo poo - when you look at the "stats" oh no it's superhuge and balls powerful, but on screen - it's in loving space, you can't tell how big it is! Come on! What I like about the second Death Star is it's incompleteness. It's the villain from the first movie who has come back for revenge, but now he has scars and that makes him super-hardcore.
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Mar 16, 2013 13:30
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While we're on the subject of wacky EU stuff, does anyone know if Knights of the Old Republic holds up? I never played it, and I was thinking of buying it.
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Mar 16, 2013 15:18
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Wubbles posted:While we're on the subject of wacky EU stuff, does anyone know if Knights of the Old Republic holds up? I never played it, and I was thinking of buying it. The first one is decent. The second one has a very interesting story, but suffers from the fact that lucasarts forced it out six months before the devs were ready, leaving a shitload of content broken or unfinished. You can however restore a lot of the lost content with mods.
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Mar 16, 2013 16:23
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mr. stefan posted:The first one is decent. The second one has a very interesting story, but suffers from the fact that lucasarts forced it out six months before the devs were ready, leaving a shitload of content broken or unfinished. You can however restore a lot of the lost content with mods. The second one is notable for basically blowing the lid off of Star Wars, and is basically an entire game dedicated to the idea that it's kind of hosed up that the entire universe is based on an actual Good Versus Evil dichotomy, and dares to ask questions like "is performing an evil act for the greater good really evil?". Naturally Lucas disowned the concept, but it's damned good writing. But yeah, it's also broken and rushed to hell to meet a Christmas release, but the stuff it does well, it does better than pretty much any other game. The first one is pretty much just Star Wars fanfic with the names changed and all the archetypes jumbled around slightly. It's still fun to be the hero in a Star Wars story and jump around with lightsabers, though.
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Mar 16, 2013 16:45
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KotOR was a lot of fun for the time, but if you've played a Bioware game since then you've already played KotOR only with a different coat of paint. Of course, it's always on sale for $2.50 on Steam just about every time they have a big sale, so it's not a huge investment either way.
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Mar 16, 2013 17:22
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As a kid I used to loving love RotJ more, mostly due to the ~space battle~, thinking that the first movie's space battles seemed slow and such in comparison. Plus I was like 13 when Zahn's Thrawn series came out and the EU just started its exponential poo poo ballooning, so I totally bought into all of the poo poo like "TIEs are disposable poo poo vehicles and Storm troopers are terrible!" Now that I'm much older, I really appreciate the first movie for what it did. Back then there wasn't any stupid EU to poo poo on everything, and the fact that the Millenium Falcon fought off 4 TIEs on its own seemed crazy impressive (thanks EU for letting me know that the Death Star probably had 4 billion extras they could have thrown at it!). And the space battle seem like slower powerful ships flying around instead of zippy little meaningless things in later movies. Plus the heroes either were awesome (Han Solo's Stormtrooper charge) or just plain lucky (Luke and Leia across the gap) than just the stormtroopers being uniformly terrible. Oh well.
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Mar 16, 2013 17:33
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echoplex posted:E: thinking of RotJ, another Death Star? That's got to have been a let down at the time. I remember reading somewhere that Gary Kurtz hated the idea of 'another Death Star' because it was so derivative. The whole ending of ROTJ was wrong, as he saw it. It wouldn't have made the movie into some kind of overly serious or depressing end if they HAD allowed Han Solo to die on his last mission, Luke to ride off into the sunset, and for a bitter peace (instead of total victory) at the end. The best part about Jedi was the entire first half. Jabba's palace and the sand pit, even now, fit in perfectly with the first two movies and are really a slap in the face to the EU and Star Wars mania: Leia getting turned out, fanfiction favorite Boba Fett dies like a chump, the way life was cheap and brutish for almost everyone, and Luke's Jedi Mind Tricks and wisdom fall way short of his decision to simply go balls out and kill everyone. The worst thing about the end of ROTJ wasn't the way the story went, it was just the way they went about it. The Empire completely lost its teeth, and I'm not only talking about the Ewoks killing stormtroopers. The 'magic BB guns' strategy worked in the first movie because nobody expected a single fighter to be able to take down a whole battle station. By the third movie, and certainly in the EU and videogames to follow, it became standard practice. Killing the Death Star in basically the same way was even more pointless than resurrecting it in the first place. Speaking of the original movie, and the people who made it, there is an interesting book about how it came to be: http://www.legacybookspress.com/Books/The%20Secret%20History%20of%20Star%20Wars%20-%20Free%20Sample.pdf I like how it does give some credence to Lucas' claim that he wanted to make a modern Flash Gordon, but how it was the creative minds around him that made a more unique world and story to go in it.
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Mar 16, 2013 18:06
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I always thought the X wings looked rough because they did atmospheric flight and the TIEs were space only.
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Mar 16, 2013 19:28
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